


Right of Return

by Morbane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Crossover, Gen, Grindelwald won, Original Character(s), POV First Person, Siblings, Unreliable Narrator, angry female character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Capitol took Teena's brother to be a wizard. She will do anything to get him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right of Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isquinnabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/gifts).



I remember the Capitol. Everything shone. Every surface reflected light, and there was light everywhere - panels like windows or skylights, enchanted to show the sunlight of other days, and enchanted torches lining the streets at night. Even the smoke sparkled, because it was magic smoke. If it left soot, I never saw it. Even the smells were fizzy and neon, exploding in your nose or rushing over you, combining like paint splatters and then vanishing with the wave of a wizard's wand.

Sometimes, you see something when you're young - a big house, or a large tree or hill - and when you encounter it again in later years, it is smaller than you expect, and less impressive, because of the changes in you.

But I don't think that it will be like that, the next time I see the Capitol. I am not magical, and the Capitol is, and no amount of growing will change that.

When I was there before, I think I somehow knew I wouldn't be staying, that I didn't belong. I was only there because of my brother - because he was my _twin_ brother. Because my brother had summoned a wind to set a kite flying.

It was a hot summer that year, long and dry to follow a dry spring, and Reaping was just weeks away. Everyone was fidgety. It felt as though it had always been just before Reaping, and always would be, except, of course, for the part that actually was Reaping. Val and I had turned twelve a few weeks before, and at the end of our birthday dinner, our father got up suddenly, and went out to the back porch and closed the door - back then there was nowhere, if you wanted space for yourself, except outdoors - and when he came in half an hour later he'd been crying.

"Don't worry," I said to our mother, "between us we're twenty-four," because back then, Val and I finished each other's sentences and wore the same clothes and everyone joked that we were just different halves of the same person.

I thought that was clever, but it made my mother stop smiling, and I realised it wasn't clever at all, because you didn't put words to that kind of thing.

It was like that a lot, that summer.

I liked playing around the house, in the shade, when we had time for playing. But Val wanted to leave the house when he could. He had an idea that we could go kite-flying, which was stupid, because there was barely any breeze, but I think Val thought that if he just ran hard enough back and forth across the square, it would work.

It was kind of funny to watch. I laughed and he glared at me, but neither of us stayed angry at the other for long.

"You try," he said.

"I don't even want to," I reminded him.

"You try," he insisted, "and I'll catch my breath and try harder."

That was fair. But it was hard to get right - when I took the string from him and started running, there was too much string played out, so that the kite dragged along the ground, and when I reeled it back in, I had to figure out how to pay it out as I ran. I didn't look like someone who was running with a kite - I looked like someone who was running _off_ with it, having stolen it, with it slung behind my back.

What a stupid thing that would be to steal.

I got to the end of the square and started to turn back. Then I heard someone else laughing - the Sower boys, who were half of the reason we avoided the square in the first place. Now I was really running, even though I looked stupid - the kite was just an excuse.

I saw Vallis' face, furious that they were laughing at me, and then I saw him take a deep breath and blow - and a huge wind came screaming across the square to me, nearly knocking me over. The kite string burned, running through my hands. I dropped it and then grabbed at it again, and by then the kite was high above the warehouses where the grain is stored before sending on to the Capitol, high above the prison, even higher than the bell tower.

The wind tore my hairclip away and rattled windows and roof-tiles.

Behind Vallis, the street was still and peaceful.

Before the wind even died down, the witches and wizards appeared.

There was no hiding that it was Vallis who had made the wind come. Even if he'd done something and only I'd seen it, it wouldn't have helped. They say that the Capitol has ways of knowing any time anyone does any magic, unless you're one of them. And they care very much.

I was still running - I ran straight up to them, and stopped, foolishly, a few metres away, because I didn't want to be that close to someone from the Capitol, but I didn't want to let them see me running away.

They all had their wands out. They did something to Val so that his mouth closed and his hands locked down by his sides and his eyes went glassy. "Tell us where you live, boy," one of them said briskly - a woman wearing a dark blue version of a billowy sort of dress they call robes.

"Don't make him tell you," I said, stupidly. It was just awful to see them operating him, as if he were a puppet or a machine. "I'll tell you."

They were always going to take Val, and once they learned I was his twin sister, they took me too.

We went to the Capitol by train. It wasn't the special train they use for tributes, but it seemed very fancy to me. They spent the whole trip telling us the rules of the Capitol, and how lucky we were, and how grateful we should feel. "You are a very special young man," said the blue-robed witch, who was called Madam Wilde. "And you," she added to me, "well... we'll see."

But there was nothing to see. I was ordinary.

When they gave Val a wand, blue mist came out. When they gave me a wand, the smooth wood almost slipped out of my hand, like it didn't want my grasp. That wasn't the only test. We were in the Capitol for two months before they decided that I had not the tiniest scrap of magic, and they would send me back to District 9.

But in those two months, I was like Val's' shadow. We went everywhere together, because it was easier to accommodate two "barbarian" children than one, but they spoke to him, not me. Every now and then I was acknowledged, and you could see them thinking that I _might_ just turn out to be useful - after all, someone had considered it worth keeping me here, for now - so they might as well pretend that was the case.

I saw beautiful things, because the people of the Capitol wanted to dazzle Val. And we saw ugly things, too, and terrifying things, to ensure that both of us stayed in line. 

My favourite thing, the one that stayed with me ever after, was a fountain in the middle of a vast plaza. It was ringed by statues of animals and monsters and other races, with a wizard towering above them, but those didn't impress me. I was watching the water. The jet from the fountain went up in a narrow stream and then curved and curlicued in the air. It was like watching a tangle of string form. It formed loops and squares and bends - never touching itself - and then it fell back into the pool and came up to do it all again. Sometimes it made spiky shapes and sometimes all the bends were right-angles and sometimes they were all soft curves. It was as precise as if it was running along a track, but there was no track. I could have watched it for hours.

As Val and I were staring at the fountain, I heard a voice in my ear. "Muggles helped make that, you know."

I jumped. So did several other people. The witch who was looking after us that day - Madam Greenslade, who often forgot I was there, but who was mostly forgettable herself - jumped, and looked scared. The woman standing next to me wasn't wearing robes. She was wearing a dark red jumpsuit. She smiled at me, and I realised I had seen her before. She was Brianna, and she had won the Hunger Games eight years ago for our District. I had never seen her in person before, but I had seen her picture sometimes on the broadcasts the Capitol makes.

"I am not sure your influence is desirable," Madam Greenslade said, trying to sound stern and failing. She was much shorter than Brianna, and she looked flustered, while Brianna was wearing an easy grin. Even so, Madam Greenslade had a wand and Brianna didn't, and I knew how much of a difference that made.

"I won't stay past my welcome," Brianna said, turning that easy grin on our escort. "I just wanted to let the children know I share in their excitement. They must be very thrilled to be here."

Madam Greenslade relaxed a little. "Indeed," she said. "Aren't you, Master Valerian, Teena?"

"Of course!" we both said, as we had learned to say by then. 

Valerian wasn't ever Val's name before - he was Vallis - but they said it was more appropriate for a wizard. They never bothered to re-name me.

"Well, I'm honoured to make your acquaintance too," Brianna said, and swept us a little bow, and left. 

"Pushy," I heard Madam Greenslade mutter to another, nearby wizard who was admiring the fountain too. "Probably thinks that the District connection will ingratiate her to the boy. Shameful, taking advantage of a child like that."

I don't know if Val remembered Brianna, but I did.

Valerian he was called, and Valerian he stayed - and he stayed in the Capitol when they sent me home. I cried - silently. They weren't very nice when you screamed. I hadn't expected to stay. There's no place for a Muggle child in the Capitol, not even as a servant. They have goblins and pixies and house-elves for that. But I hadn't really, truly, understood that Val _would_. We did everything together. They'd let me come with him. But they wouldn't let him go home with me.

They didn't let me say goodbye, either.

So I wrote letters.

The first few weeks back were terrible. Not just because there was no Val, but because the Games had just finished. Instead of standing with the crowds to find out if I'd be Reaped that year, I'd been taken to the Capitol to be fussed over. And I'd come back. Unlike either of the tributes from District 9 that year.

When Val and I been in the Capitol, of course, the Games had been the big thing. But they'd tried to keep us away from the spectacle. I think they thought that if we saw Muggles tricking and beating each other to death in the Arena, we'd revert to our own savage, Muggle ways. That was the point of the Games, or at least how the wizards saw it. Muggles were savages. Wizards were elegant and refined and far above them.

The kids in school resented me fiercely. So did the adults, though they were subtler about it. Later, I understood a bit more about them keeping their distance. I might not have been magical, but the wizards were going to _remember_ our family. Probably check up on future kids. I wasn't a very safe person to know.

Especially since I kept writing letters.

It wasn't as hard as you'd think to get them sent to Val. I'd been in the Capitol for two months, after all, and been a good little girl with not much to do but listen and watch (and when I wasn't good, I got _Silencio_ , and I still had nothing to do but listen and watch), and now that I was back, I could drop names and hints about the Capitol that meant people would do what I said. 

(Maybe my peers' resentment wasn't completely unfair.)

He never wrote back. I didn't care. Months passed. I started to write down what I thought he'd say to this or that, almost carrying on both sides of the conversation on paper. But I sent them, because that wasn't nearly good enough. I wanted him to know I hadn't forgotten him. I wanted _everyone_ to know. I carried my writing paper with me everywhere. It didn't win me any friends.

We'd been two halves of the same person for so long that I saw it this way: if I didn't forget Val, he wouldn't forget me. It had to be symmetrical. If I moved on, so would he. If I clung to him, in some way, I would keep him.

Then the Howler came.

I was sitting in school when the red envelope slid under the door - and then rose up from the floor and flew to my desk. 

"Don't open it!" my teacher said quickly, but there was no avoiding it. I picked it up to drop it in the bin - even I could see it was bad news - and it grew a mouth and bit me.

I screamed.

It screamed back.

Then it screamed a lot more. 

It was Val's voice - _Valerian's_ voice. It was _mean_. It told me I had to stop writing to him. It told me I ought to be ashamed of reminding him where he'd come from, and reminding everyone else in the Capitol too. It told me he was better than that, now, and that I ought to be better than that too, for his sake, if not for mine. It kept going.

Around the room, there were some people grinning to hear Val yelling at me. Some probably thought it was a comeuppance for putting on airs. But they expected it to stop, and it didn't.

My teacher tried to grab at it, but it flew up in the air, out of her reach. Eventually, she grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the classroom. The letter followed. Even when she bundled me into the room below the basement that had been designed as a bomb shelter, the one that didn't have any gaps in the doors, beat the letter off with a stick, and closed the door on me, I only got a few minutes' break from the yelling, and then there was a _pop_ and the horrible letter was in the basement with me.

I jumped up and ran - the teacher hadn't locked the door - right out of the basement, out of the school, and out of the town, and the letter followed. I sprawled under a tree near where Val and I had used to play, and listened to him yelling at me.

The words started to repeat after a while. I guess he hadn't had as much to say as he'd had magic to make the Howler go. Or someone had helped him.

It went on long enough that, after the first part, where I was crying so hard my face was a mess of snot, I was cried out, and it was still yelling. I lay back and let it all blur together. I felt almost peaceful, at a place in the eye of the storm that was the Howler's abuse.

Then it fizzled out, and fluttered down from the tree where it had been hovering above me, and if I'd had any tears left, I would have cried again. I didn't know if I'd ever hear my brother's voice again.

I didn't go back to school. I went and washed my face in a tap from a pipe laid to the edge of the near fields, and I waited until it would have been the end of school. Then I went on to my chores at the warehouse - they called them chores, even though it was work as hard as some of the adults did. That way, I didn't have to tell my parents what had happened.

(They'd hear about it sooner or later, or course, but it wasn't the same as me _telling_ them. It was like that a lot, after that summer.)

This time, in the weeks after, when I was miserable, people were nicer to me. They'd moved on from Val ages ago, or so it seemed to me, and someone from the Capitol being mean to someone from a District meant sympathy for me. I should have been put in my place, but by _them_.

I didn't really want the sympathy, but I wasn't quick to reject it.

I waited until the Reaping - surely the only thirteen-year-old in District 9 who was looking forward to any part of it. As I'd hoped, Brianna was there - a mentor this year. I pushed my way up to the stage, within speaking distance.

I called to her, and she turned quickly from the witch and wizard announcers so that she was between me and them. She crossed the stage quickly and jumped down from it, pulling me down to a less visible height.

"What do you want?"

I showed her a box. Not letters, this time, but things: a carving of a bird, a miniature kite... "Could you take these to Valerian?" I said his wizard name without stumbling.

Her face was full of pity. "Teena, who do you think told Val to send you that Howler?" I stared, uncomprehending. She pointed at herself.

I stumbled back, to my place with the thirteen-year-olds waiting in line, and watched her watch this year's tributes climb to the stage.

That was when I came up with my next plan. It wasn't a very good plan, from some angles, and it wasn't a very kind plan, but then, people hadn't been very kind to me; or when they had been kind, they had not been generous.

I was going to go back to the Capitol and find Val myself.

Even if I had to volunteer for the Hunger Games to do it.

Maybe the plan stayed with me because it was the kind of thing I could aim to do, but not _do_. Not yet. The idea could hover in the back of my head, but it required no commitment. I did a few things. I tried to build muscle, learn useful skills. It was easier for me than for some, because when the wizards took Val, they gave my family some money. Another reason I hadn't been popular, coming home. But I had more time for my own pursuits, and we had more food on the table, and the house we lived in, after Val, had at least one extra room where someone could go and be alone.

My third Reaping went by. That year, the boy from our district came home. We celebrated him, and we feasted with him, but it was a little like me and Val. He'd come home without someone. When you saw him, you thought of her. 

Like me and Val, but not at all.

The year I was sixteen, I formed the words _I volunteer_ on my lips, but I didn't say them.

I'd decided I'd volunteer when I was seventeen. I took all the tesserae I could, because I thought I might as well. I got a friend of mine to give my grain and oil away.

We watched the cup of flame that would spit out the names of those chosen that year. (Wizards. In love with anything showy.) It occurred to me to wonder how it would feel, for the girl chosen that year, to experience the horror of hearing her name, and then to hear me speak instead. I wondered if the girl who was chosen would be anyone I knew.

It wasn't. It was girl from the twelve-year-old group. I opened my mouth to speak - 

\- and heard _Silencio._

I swear I opened my mouth to speak. I was at least that brave. But I was a moment too slow to raise my arms, to signal that I volunteered even without words.

 _Petrificus Totalus_ came next.

I couldn't even turn my head. And no one turned their heads to look at me. It was as if I was the only person who had heard those words.

They'd anticipated me.

But they have not won.

I will not be silent, despite being treated as a thing with no mind, as a child, or shouted over by a magical voice, or sealed inside my body. I will keep trying. I will not give up.

I will find my brother - not Valerian, but Vallis, even if he doesn't know that that is who he is. I will return to the Capitol by a way they cannot expect, because even I do not know it yet. But I will find a way.

I will speak to my brother again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you very very much to NM for the beta!


End file.
